They have said that 8 and 16 will have the same gear, 16 will just have more of it. They also said that 8 and 16 will share a lockout but the different challenge modes will not.
To put it in wow terms, you can run FL normal on either setting and FL hardmode on either setting every week.

They have said that 8 and 16 will have the same gear, 16 will just have more of it. They also said that 8 and 16 will share a lockout but the different challenge modes will not.
To put it in wow terms, you can run FL normal on either setting and FL hardmode on either setting every week.

'Loot containers' (name is still a work in progress!) do indeed exist and are designed to alleviate the frustration some feel around high-level loot drops.

As it's currently implemented, at the end of a key encounter within an Operation, upon looting a high-level opponent, everyone in the Operations group will get an individual container which has a chance to give you a random piece of loot that's specific to your class. It could be part of an armor set, a weapon, and so on. If you don't get loot, you'll get commendations which can be used to purchase gear.

Not sure I get the NDA point. They have posted this stuff themselves. My link and quote was from an official source

Taking the loot out of the hands of a guilds loot council or raid lead would ruin progressive raiding unless the logic of their system is incredibly intuitive, which sounds more difficult than handling it traditionally. So they would have to make the loot bag type simply a loot option that can be toggled or turned off.

Loot will be handled differently according to the level of difficulty you run it on.

The "loot bag" is going to be for the bottom level of difficulty since it is being catered to not needing real coordination (voice chat, raid lead, master looter) and this type of looting caters to Pugs which will be doing these operations often.

I'm not digging up where i read this, but i did. LOL.

The interview in the link said it applied to all, but I guess we wait and see:

Each Raid has 2 sizes, for 8 and 16 heros, aswell as ajustable difficulty levels. The quality of the loot is based on the difficulty setting of the instance." After every bossfight EACH player gets a bag of Rewards", sais Lead designer Gabe Amatangelo. "Inside that Bag you "can" ( as in possiblitly ) find class specific Items, or Badges which can be used to buy items. You don't have to fight for your rewards."

Thanks for the information. I care because as I start to figure out exactly how many more people to recruit for our guild, it's these kinds of things that are going to be important. I'm also committed to finding out as much information as I can in the next couple of months.

They said that when you down a boss, you get a loot bag, regardless. As such, the raid as whole gets more loot in 16mans, but each individual player gets the same amount of loot.

The difficulty of the raids is a choice like you choose in WoW, and spans 8 or 16mans, they are going to ensure that the raids are the same difficulty, and reward the same amount of loot per player.

There is no favouring of any group size in any way, and as such, 8 or 16 is purely a personal choice to which you prefer.

I should also point out that the loot that drops in your loot bag will only be gear you can equip, so you won't get trooper armor as a smuggler for instance. Bare in mind that just because you can equip it, it doesn't mean it will drop something you want - you may get the same item twice.

Finally, the harder difficulty of raids will additionally have drops from the bosses from my understanding, although I believe this is just limited to the hard difficulty - I don't know yet how many difficulty types there are, there are at least two, but I believe the last thing they stated was they they were still deciding on this. You can say for sure that the easier ones will drop only Loot Bags, while the hardest will drop additional loot AND Loot Bags.

So harder = more loot per person, size = more loot total, same loot per person.

So in essence you get loot per boss, and then upon completion everyone gets a loot bag?

From what I understand, on the normal difficulty every person in the raid/operation group gets a loot bag upon the death/completion of a boss. On heroic the boss will drop loot similar to how other MMOs handle loot. Not sure about the easy, easy difficulty (the one they've confirmed will be doable at level 50 in questing gear w/o voice communication).

So in essence you get loot per boss, and then upon completion everyone gets a loot bag?

You kill a boss, and you get a loot bag. So if there are 10 bosses, you get 10 loot bags.

---------- Post added 2011-10-28 at 01:29 AM ----------

Originally Posted by jearle

Taking the loot out of the hands of a guilds loot council or raid lead would ruin progressive raiding unless the logic of their system is incredibly intuitive, which sounds more difficult than handling it traditionally. So they would have to make the loot bag type simply a loot option that can be toggled or turned off.

We will see since at this point its only being tested internally.

How would it ruin "progressive raiding"? In WoW's system, a certain amount of loot drops, it may or may not be useful. In TOR's Everyone gets a piece of loot that may or may not be useful, therefore, if anything, you have a better chance of gearing up, and thus, if anything, helping "progressive raiding" because you should get geared up faster, simply because there is more loot going around in TOR than in WoW.

Not only this, if you don't have to deal with a loot council or EPGP or whatever, then you will spend less time sorting out loot, sure, it may only be a few minutes, but it will be dealt with faster.

It's relatively simple, you kill a boss, you get a bag with loot in it. I'm lost as to how that could be more difficult than having to decide, some how, who to give any singular piece of gear to.

---------- Post added 2011-10-28 at 01:32 AM ----------

Originally Posted by smashzu

They never said anything about 8 v 16 player difficulty, which is what OP asked.

For all you know, (and noone can correct you because of the NDA) 16 player raids could give you a 100% chance at loot from your bag and the 8 player could giver you a 1% chance.

Like I said originally though, why do you care?
It's going to be at least 10 weeks before anyone sees a raid. -,-

Incorrect, they have stated that 8 and 16 will get the same loot per player, assuming the same difficulty. Harder difficulties get better gear, and the bosses additionally can drop one or two pieces of gear as well as a loot bag, resulting in more loot per person, this was stated in a video somewhere - this is by difficulty though, and will be equal, relatively, to the raid size, so you can assume that if a boss drops 4 pieces of loot on 16, it will drop 2 on 8, as well as your own loot bag - it's still the same amount of loot per person.

I also don't see how it is your place, or anyone's to question why a person cares or not, it's obvious he cares, he wouldn't ask otherwise, there's nothing to be gained by discussing his reasoning for caring about something, it's just asking to lead to some eventual insults, there's no point.

I hate the fact that they implemented two size raids, why couldn't they just make it either 8 or 16..or even make it 12. This system killed 25mans in WoW, only a few hardcore 25 man guilds are raiding per server and only 1-2 or no casual 25mans. Most people raid 10mans and I'll bet it will be the same for SWTOR.

I hate the fact that they implemented two size raids, why couldn't they just make it either 8 or 16..or even make it 12. This system killed 25mans in WoW, only a few hardcore 25 man guilds are raiding per server and only 1-2 or no casual 25mans. Most people raid 10mans and I'll bet it will be the same for SWTOR.

I disagree - there are several differences to note:
16 players is 9 players less than a 25man. Consider that most 25mans need a roster larger than that to maintain absences, then consider that as a smaller team you need less backups since there are less players, overall making setting up a 16man considerably more managable. It's not too much bigger than a 10man, they typically have the advantage of being accessable to casual players or being great for a small group of friends, 16 is still small enough for both of these to be highly true.
With only 16 instead of 25 you also have less people to learn encounters, to fuck up, to not be here, to gear up, etc.

Sure, you could argue that all of this is even easier for 8 people, but consider the size of a lot of 10Mans, they're going on 14-15 people already, maybe more, it's not that unreasonable to get maybe a full roster of 20 people. It's still less than the base amount for 25mans not including backups. While an 8 man group might maybe need only 10-11 people at most, it's for sure easier to get, but I think given how much easier a 16man will be to setup than 25man will mean that people will be less inclined to go one way or the other because it's easier/harder, and more inclined to go with what they prefer.